Horizontal waterjet drilling is used in the oil and gas industry to access hydrocarbons located at specific depths below the earth's surface. To illustrate, oil and gas wells are typically drilled by the use of rotary drilling equipment vertically into the earth's strata. The vertically extending well holes generally include a casing made of mild steel which defines the cross-sectional area of a well for transportation of the oil and gas upwardly to the earth's surface. However, these vertically extending wells are only useful for removing oil and gas from the general vicinity adjacent to and directly underneath the terminating downward end of the well. Thus, not all of the oil and gas in the pockets or formations in the Earth's strata, at the location of the well depth, can be removed.
Because it is time-consuming and costly to make adjacent vertical drillings to access remaining hydrocarbons, the borehole casing of an existing oil or gas well is penetrated and then a lateral channel is bored through the adjacent formation of interest using a high pressure waterjet nozzle. High-pressure hoses and waterjets are required to pass through extremely tight areas to reach the formation of interest, seemingly requiring a more flexible, smaller inner-diameter hose that can reduce overall fluid pressures. A reduction in fluid pressure results in inadequate cutting power from the waterjet nozzle and, therefore, reduced drilling capacity.
Therefore, it remains desirable to find improved waterjet cutting methods that may be practiced in small areas and yet still allow for substantial high-pressure fluid pumping flow rates. It also remains desirable to find new and improved devices that aid the high-pressure hose in moving from a vertical disposition to a horizontal disposition without compromising the integrity or flow rate of the hose.